Simulating Prism Adaptation In Virtual Reality To Determine Efficacy for Future Intervention Use
Advisor Information
Brian Knarr
Presentation Type
Poster
Start Date
26-3-2021 12:00 AM
End Date
26-3-2021 12:00 AM
Abstract
A common impairment following stroke is called unilateral spatial neglect, which is an attentional deficit that significantly reduces quality of life. Symptoms include the inability to process and respond to stimuli toward the side opposite of the individual’s stroke. One successful form of treatment, called prism adaptation, involves the individual interacting with their surroundings while wearing prism goggles that shift their visual environment to one side. This study is working to validate a VR environment that simulates this standard treatment protocol with twenty healthy participants. The VR environment instructs the user to point directly to targets before, during, and after simulating a 10˚ sideways shift and records the position of the hand along the entire reach to then calculate how much the individual errored. We hypothesize that individuals will have negligible error before, a rightward error during, and a leftward error after the shift. Preliminary results show that the simulated prism adaptation protocol, along with simulated hand occlusion during the first part of reaching, results in a statistically significant difference between the errors during and after the prism shift. Additionally, average error during prism shift is more rightward than before, and the average error after the prism shift is more leftward than before, as hypothesized. Validations of these hypotheses provide support for future studies to use the simulation with individuals who have neglect, an alternative to the standard prism adaptation treatment. This facilitates greater visual complexity, as well as the ability to quantify performance and progress.
Simulating Prism Adaptation In Virtual Reality To Determine Efficacy for Future Intervention Use
A common impairment following stroke is called unilateral spatial neglect, which is an attentional deficit that significantly reduces quality of life. Symptoms include the inability to process and respond to stimuli toward the side opposite of the individual’s stroke. One successful form of treatment, called prism adaptation, involves the individual interacting with their surroundings while wearing prism goggles that shift their visual environment to one side. This study is working to validate a VR environment that simulates this standard treatment protocol with twenty healthy participants. The VR environment instructs the user to point directly to targets before, during, and after simulating a 10˚ sideways shift and records the position of the hand along the entire reach to then calculate how much the individual errored. We hypothesize that individuals will have negligible error before, a rightward error during, and a leftward error after the shift. Preliminary results show that the simulated prism adaptation protocol, along with simulated hand occlusion during the first part of reaching, results in a statistically significant difference between the errors during and after the prism shift. Additionally, average error during prism shift is more rightward than before, and the average error after the prism shift is more leftward than before, as hypothesized. Validations of these hypotheses provide support for future studies to use the simulation with individuals who have neglect, an alternative to the standard prism adaptation treatment. This facilitates greater visual complexity, as well as the ability to quantify performance and progress.